PM At The Oasis

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"We are all ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day." - Brad Meltzer

 

 

 

 Ballpoint pen in 5.5" x 8.5" sketchbook.

Sitting in the van, in the parking lot of Oasis liquor store in Buckingham, Richardson, TX. There's a bank now, where those trucks are. In the foreground you can see stakes with black stuff draped between them; that's that construction plastic/tarp stuff they put down under a concrete pour, so BOA was on its way, even then.

I did a number of sketches at various times in this area, but this is the best one.

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"... classic poise ..."

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Slightly digitally enhanced version of pencil in 8.5" x 5.5" sketchbook, unenhanced scan below. The edit was an attempt to make up for the paint splatters ...
 

Study from a small photo in a magazine of Ryeui ryu karate kata champion Tsuguo Sakumoto. The likeness is not great, and it's all I had to go by for the subsequent black/white 20" x 16" oil painting(1996), so I gave up on that and just went for human-looking.

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"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." (Yogi Berra)

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Darkness At Times Edge

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The year Christopher Reeves' first Superman movie came out, 1978 apparently, I'm at home trying to draw this Frazetta illustration from TV Guide -- the grayscale version to the left was in the magazine, below is the full color image -- promoting that week's episode of Battlestar Gallactica.

I mention the Superman movie because that's what interrupted the drawing: friends showed up and coaxed me away to go see the newest incarnation of The Man of Steel. 

I was glad I did but don't know why I never finished the sketch.

Anyway, it's pencil in a 11.5" x 8.5" sketchbook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Rita Drive, Garland, TX, '08

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Pencil in 5.5" x 8.5" sketchbook. A view from my 'studio' window, in those days.

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"We talk far too much. We should talk less and draw more. I personally should like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic Nature, communicate everything I have to say in sketches.
 That fig tree, this little snake, the cocoon on my window sill quietly awaiting its future –
all these are momentous signatures. A person able to decipher their meaning properly would
 soon be able to dispense with the written or the spoken word altogether. The more I think of it, there is something futile, mediocre, even (I am tempted to say) foppish about speech. By
 contrast, how the gravity of Nature and her silence startle you, when you stand face to face
 with her, undistracted, before a barren ridge or in the desolation of ancient hills."--Goethe

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Granbury, TX, '02 ...

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... from a hotel balcony overlooking the lake.

 

 

Pencil in 9" x 12" sketchbook. I just recently got this one cleaned up the best I could, after curious children took a kneaded eraser to it. Understandable temptation.

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"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."  -Mike Tyson

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South on Carson

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 "The chief enemy of creativity is good sense" - Pablo Picasso

 

 

Sitting in the car outside J'boro City Water and Light, one day back in '86. Pencil in 5.5" x 8.5" sketchbook.

 

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C Kali Strong

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"I don’t really know whether art can exist without a certain degree of tranquillity or spiritual poise; without a certain amount of quiet you can have neither philosophy nor religion nor painting nor poetry. And as one of the specialties of modern life is to abolish this quiet, we are in danger of losing our arts together with the quiet of the soul that art demands." - Saul Bellow

 

 

Way back in the early 80s I was breaking in some new pens with refillable reservoirs, to accommodate colored ink. Doodle page in 5.5" x 8.5" sketchbook.

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Old sketchbook page

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"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time." -- Orson Welles

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 "Bare Tree," ballpoint pen in 8.5" x 5.5" sketchbook

I like to commit as much as possible, old or new, to digital.

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Action figure

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 Pencil in 12" x 9" sketchbook, cropped. From a book of figures in action poses, photos for artists. 

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Then again ...

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 I was frequently castigated, for staring out the window, in school.

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Well, maybe not ...

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